Posted on 04/07/2025 12:36:18 PM PDT by nickcarraway
In 1966, the remote Spanish village of Palomares found that the "nuclear age had fallen on them from a clear blue sky". Two years after the terrifying accident, BBC reporter Chris Brasher went to find what happened when the US lost a hydrogen bomb. On 7 April 1966, almost 60 years ago this week, a missing nuclear weapon for which the US military had been desperately searching for 80 days was finally found. The warhead, with an explosive power 100 times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was carefully winched from a depth of 2,850ft (869m) out of the Mediterranean Sea and delicately lowered onto the USS Petrel. Once it was on board, officers painstakingly cut into the thermonuclear device's casing to disarm it. It was only then that everyone could breathe a sigh of relief – the last of the four hydrogen bombs that the US had accidentally dropped on Spain had been recovered.
"This was not the first accident involving nuclear weapons," said BBC reporter Chris Brasher when he reported from the scene in 1968. "The Pentagon lists at least nine previous accidents to aircraft carrying hydrogen bombs. But this was the first accident on foreign soil, the first to involve civilians and the first to excite the attention of the world."
This terrifying situation had come about because of a US operation code-named Chrome Dome. At the beginning of the 1960s, the US had developed a project to deter its Cold War rival, the Soviet Union, from launching a pre-emptive strike. A patrol of nuclear-armed B-52 bombers would continuously criss-cross the skies, primed to attack Moscow at a moment's notice. But to stay airborne on these long looping routes, the planes needed to refuel while in flight. On 17 January 1966,
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
2.2 megaton warhead for those wondering
Hiroshima was 22 kilotons
I’d forgotten the Palomares Incident.
From Perplexity......
Yes, the United States lost a hydrogen bomb in 1966 during the Palomares incident in Spain. On January 17, a B-52 bomber collided with a KC-135 tanker during mid-air refueling at 31,000 feet, causing four thermonuclear bombs to fall near the village of Palomares.
Key details:
Three bombs landed on land, with two detonating their conventional explosives (spreading radioactive plutonium over 490 acres). The third landed intact.
The fourth bomb plunged into the Mediterranean Sea and remained missing for 80 days. It was eventually recovered on April 7, 1966, using the submersible Alvin and a robotic recovery vehicle.
Recovery challenges: The underwater search involved 34 dives by Alvin and advanced technology to locate the bomb at 2,500–2,850 feet depth. Its parachute had tangled with underwater currents, complicating the retrieval.
While all four bombs were technically “lost” initially, the submerged weapon was successfully recovered, marking one of the most intense nuclear salvage operations of the Cold War. Contaminated soil from the detonated bombs was later shipped to the U.S. for disposal.
Well at least it wasn’t a “constitutional crisis”...
How many were on sunken Rooskie subs?
This was the operation in which Master Diver Carl Brashear lost his leg.
Master Diver Carl Brashear overcame many obstacles to become the first African American Master Diver and first amputee diver in the U.S. Navy.
Great Movie “ Men of Honor”
Oops.
"...On 22 January, the Air Force contacted the U.S. Navy for assistance. The Navy convened a Technical Advisory Group (TAG), chaired by Rear Admiral L. V. Swanson with Dr. John P. Craven and Captain Willard Franklyn Searle, to identify resources and skilled personnel that needed to be moved to Spain.
The search for the fourth bomb was carried out by means of a novel mathematical method, Bayesian search theory, led by Craven. This method assigns probabilities to individual map grid squares, then updates these as the search progresses. Initial probability input is required for the grid squares, and these probabilities made use of the fact that a local fisherman, Francisco Simó Orts, popularly known since as "Paco el de la bomba ("Bomb Paco" or "Bomb Frankie"), witnessed the bomb entering the water at a certain location. Simó Orts was hired by the U.S. Air Force to assist in the search operation..."
Basically, the engineers, using this technique, "bet" on where they thought the bomb was. (The search grid was enormous for the capabilities of the day, and it would have been impossible to find it, or pure luck, if they did.)
Interestingly, the same techniques were used just a few years later, resulting in the discovery of the wreck of the USS Scorpion in the mid-Atlantic.
In Project Azorian, we recovered two nuclear torpedoes from the K-129 sunk in 1968. (The ballistic missiles got away from us)
Balls of steel.
” two detonating their conventional explosives (spreading radioactive plutonium over 490 acres)”
Wow, plutonium is bad stuff. Just 10 micrograms (0.00001 grams) of inhaled plutonium dust could deliver a lethal dose to the lungs over time, causing a 50% chance of death from lung cancer within decades.
Plutonium is also chemically toxic, similar to heavy metals like lead or arsenic. It accumulates in bones and liver, mimicking calcium and iron. 0.3 milligrams per kilogram of body weight caused liver damage and bone cancer over years. For a 70-kilogram human, that’s about 21 milligrams—far more than you’d encounter outside a nuclear mishap, but it underscores that even without radiation, plutonium isn’t something you’d want in your system.
U.S. and Spanish governments launched a cleanup operation involving 1,600 U.S. military personnel and local workers. They removed 1,400–1,700 tons of contaminated soil and vegetation, and shipped it to a nuclear waste facility in South Carolina.
We have family experience with plutonium. My dad led the project at General Electric to build the Radioisotope Thermal Generators used on the Voyager spacecraft. They used plutonium to generate heat. My uncle worked on H-Bombs at Los Alamos after WW II. During the war, he was at Oak Ridge as a lead shift manager for uranium separation.
Did not know that.
I’ll throw this out there.
Would our (or any other nuke power govt.) Ever decide to just “say” we found the lost device from down deep or in mud, etc, even if we hadn’t? Just to reassure the public and stop adversaries from continuing to look for it?
Do you think any of the ones we lost and then found, really weren’t found at all?
Just a ponder.
How many federal district judges issued nationwide TRO Temporary restraining orders interfering with and complication the President and the military in their attempts to recover them and clean up the spilled plutonium? Dozens, I would guess.
Wasn’t Craven the one who found the USS Scorpion ?
Spain would be sure not to go along with that.
“Balls of steel.”
Umm, while an EOD characteristic, this was not an exceptional one.
They knew there was NO possible chance of nuclear detonation, and the parameters of safely disarming it.
Yield ,”2.2?” Mt, you’re wrong but who cares.
Brave, YES the nuclear components are nasty but the chance of a nuclear yield is Zero.
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